Definition
A Law French phrase meaning "in the first place" or "first." Derived from the Latin *imprimis*, the term functioned as a drafting convention in medieval English and Norman legal instruments, signaling the opening provision or the primary matter in a statute, pleading, or other formal document. It carries no substantive legal weight in itself; it is purely an ordering term used to introduce the first item in a sequence of provisions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current entry. The phrase is not in general use in modern English.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The term was already archaic in ordinary usage by the nineteenth century.
Editorial note: Because *en primes* belongs entirely to the legal-administrative vocabulary of medieval Anglo-Norman drafting, no meaningful gap between common and legal meaning exists — the term simply has no common life outside the law. The closer ordinary-language echo is the adverb "first" or the Latin *imprimis*, which persisted longer in formal English prose.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English statute law will encounter *en primes* with some regularity in the original Law French texts of the Statutes of Westminster and related thirteenth- and fourteenth-century legislation. The phrase is a navigational marker, not a term of art: its presence tells you that a list or sequence of provisions is being introduced, and that what follows is the drafter's primary or threshold item.
The practical trap is translating it too literally in context. Readers accustomed to Latin legal instruments may expect *imprimis* to carry the weight of priority or precedence in a substantive sense — as though the first provision is legally superior to those that follow. In medieval English statute drafting, that inference is rarely justified. The term is structural, not hierarchical.
A secondary trap arises in paleographic work. In manuscript sources, *en primes* can be condensed or abbreviated in ways that make it visually similar to other short Law French phrases. Confirming the term against the printed statute rolls or against an edited text is advisable before treating an abbreviated form as settled.
Because the phrase appears in foundational instruments — Statute of Westminster I (1275) and *Articuli super Cartas* (1300) among them — researchers tracing the development of parliamentary drafting conventions will find it a consistent thread across a wide span of the early corpus. It belongs to the same family of structural markers as *item*, *purveu est*, and *en outre*, and should be read as part of that drafting vocabulary rather than in isolation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the entry most researchers will encounter: a concise gloss equating the phrase with Latin *imprimis* and noting its constant occurrence in old French statutes, with specific reference to Britton, Statute of Westminster I (chapter 1), and *Articuli super Cartas*. Burrill's treatment is accurate as far as it goes, but it is brief by design — the entry functions as a pointer rather than an analysis.
What Burrill does not address is the comparative drafting context: how *en primes* relates to equivalent terms in continental French legal usage of the same period, or how English parliamentary drafters adapted Law French conventions from Norman administrative practice. Researchers needing that depth will need to go beyond the historical dictionaries entirely and into specialized scholarship on medieval English legislation.
No material divergence exists among the historical legal dictionaries on this term. It is one of the cleaner entries in the Law French vocabulary — unambiguous in meaning, consistent in usage, and without the doctrinal overlays that complicate more substantive terms.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is historically specific to the Anglo-Norman legal tradition and appears primarily in English statute and common law sources from the late thirteenth through mid-fifteenth centuries. It has no current jurisdictional relevance in any modern legal system.